Honey Bee Removal

Honey bees scouting for a new home.  I had not anticipated posting again so soon, but things just spring up unexpectedly at our house.  On Saturday morning I saw a steady stream of bees flying into and out of a crack in the bricks on the front porch.  Do they have a hive in there?  

A swarm arrives.  Fortunately I had called a bee removal company right away, because those few bees turned out to only be scouts.  When the Frog went out Saturday afternoon he discovered there was now a large swarm over the hole in the bricks that we had seen earlier.  

Swarm of honey bees on the front porch

The doorbell surveillance camera has terrible resolution, but I could still see that the entire swarm arrived in only a matter of minutes.  Below are screen captures of that video taken at one minute intervals.  I stopped after five minutes since the size of the swarm stopped growing and there no longer seemed to be bees flying around.  (The flying bees were visible in the video, but are not visible in these still pics.)

2:02:30 pm

2:03:30 pm

2:04:30

2:05:30

2:06:30

2:07:30

The bee removal guy showed up about 4:30.  It only took him a little more than half an hour to assess the situation, remove the swarm with the queen, and treat the area inside and out with insecticide.  

Bees decide to move in.  According to this site, when a bee colony becomes too crowded it sends out scouts to find a new home for a portion of the colony.  If they find an acceptable location, between a third and two thirds of the colony moves to the new location and begins to move in.  If they cannot quickly find an appropriate new home, the break-off group still moves out but they may just hang out in a temporary location.  In either case they hold together as a swarm, hovering around the queen to protect her.  In our case, an infrared picture of the fascia board above the brick indicated they were beginning to build a new hive.  They had apparently decided this would be their new long term home.

Infrared picture of the bricks below and fascia board above showing the beginnings of a hive behind the fascia board.

Removing the bees.  I did not necessarily want to kill the bees, but we couldn't have them living at the front door.  Fortunately without immature bees or honey to protect, this swarm of bees was relatively docile,  It was also early in the move--the queen was still outside of the cavity.  Getting her was the key.  Once the queen was in the box, most of the rest of the bees that were not already there quickly followed.

 

It was actually impressive how quickly the process went.  Of course, it may have helped that he had been doing this for 25 years.  He was quite the character, which you may be able to tell from some of the audio on the video below, but he seemed very good.
 

We were very fortunate to be able to remove these bees before they became established.  However, any trace of the beeswax from their nascent hive will attract future bees.  To prevent future invasions, we are to wait two weeks, then take the fascia board down and remove and clean the remnants of whatever is still there. 

The bee guy estimated there were probably about 3000 bees in this swarm.  That sounded like a lot to me at the time, but may actually be small as swarms go. They were to be picked up later that evening to be relocated to a beekeeper in Tyler.

What about the old colony?   Of course, while all of this is going on, a new queen and the remaining portion of the colony are likely at the original colony location.  Chances are that is not too far away.  I have not seen any bees hanging around the vegetable garden this week, but I may be on their black list.